Conveyors are well-known to those or ordinary skill in the mechanical arts. Paraphrased, the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines a conveyor as an endless moving belt or a chain of receptacles, which is useful to move articles from place to place.
Prior art conveyors are used to transport virtually any kind of object or material that is capable of being carried in, or on a container. Conveyors carry foods through, or along production lines in food preparation factories. Fast food restaurants and food service providers use conveyors to carry food products through an oven or along a food preparation line.
Virtually all of the prior art conveyors used in factories as well as in food preparation plants, food services and restaurants move in a single, vertically-oriented plane. Put another way, the prior art conveyors used to move food, move it along a straight line. The direction of an item carried by conveyor can be changed by moving a conveyor-carried item from a conveyor that runs in a first direction, onto a second conveyor that runs in a second direction. Prior art conveyors that move items in a straight line can also raise or lower the elevation of an item but they nevertheless move in substantially the same vertical plane.
In high-volume or fast food restaurants, the ability to quickly, reliably and continuously cook food items is important. Unusual or uniquely-shaped food items can be particularly difficult to prepare. Cone-shaped foods are particularly difficult to cook.
As used herein, the term “pizza cone” refers to an edible cone, the interior of which is filled with pizza fillings, such as meats, cheeses and other ingredients. The cone part of a pizza cone is usually made from pizza dough, however, cones made from other types of dough can also be filled with pizza fillings or other foods.
Because of its shape, a pizza cone is particularly difficult to heat and/or cook. Because if a cone is place on its “side” for cooking, fillings inside the cone will spill or fall out of the cone as temperature rises. If the cone is inverted so as to be cooked on a flat surface, the contents will nevertheless spill when the cone is removed from a heating surface to be turned upright for sale and consumption. One way to heat or cook a filled cone is to heat the cone while it is upright, i.e., with the pointed, narrow end of the cone downward, in order to keep fillings in the cone as it the cone is heated. A conveyor that can move foods and other objects and materials along tortuous paths in a horizontal plane, would be an improvement over the prior art because it would enable foods such as cones to be moved into and out of an oven while the items are held upright.